Because of the disaster in Haiti I devoted some of my lessons today to discussing the recent Earthquake.
I used video clips from the news this morning along with newspaper sections from yesterday (Thursday) and today. I also used the Power Point below.
I did not develop any real tasks but we labelled a map and discussed long term and short term effects along with what aid is needed and the geographical problems effecting the distribution of the aid.
I was in Waterstones in Central London on Friday and I always have a browse through their Geography books including the textbooks and I found this title. It was published in 2006 but I had not seen it before.
It is a KS3 textbook designed for stretching the most able students and has a six different units of work.
They are well written and the material is up to date and stimulating.
This brings me to a wider point on differentiation; in my school we teach in hierarchial sets (1-4) for each side of the year group (two parallel populations). Currently all students follow the same general schemes of work; though the individual lesssons are differentiated for different groups abilities.
I am thinking of trialing out the Cybergeographies unit with my high ablility Year 9 to stretch them. I am not going to get a class set of the textbooks (because I can’t afford them with our budget and I am not sure whether it will work) but I might put together some bits and pieces based on the ideas in the textbook. I will pick up the pace and try to fit this in as an extra unit before Christmas.
In preparation for students choosing their options I have produced an updated information leaflet about careers in Geography. The majority of the text comes from a leaflet produced by the Geographical Association a few years ago.
You can download the word document here.
If anyone wants to create their own wordle using similar information the text I used to create the wordle is here.
More information about the employability of Geography graduates can be found here.
Today I attended a course run by Philip Allen led by David Redfern on AQA A2 Geography Unit 4B, the Issues Evaluation Exercise.
Below are my notes from the sessions.
He also shared some PowerPoint slides that could be used to introduce the paper to students. I have created my own version below; this is very heavily based on his!
You can download the PowerPoint here.
Just down the road from where I live and work is Bradwell on Sea. There has been information in the local press recently about one of the new Nuclear Reactors being built there. There is already a nuclear power station on the site though it stopped generating in 2002, has been fully defueled and is now in the process of being decomissioned.
Page 2 that links with the above article:
Click on the scans of the articles for larger versions.
There is also an online article here.
The local council still maintains some form of contingency plans.
I will be using this when teaching the ‘Old’ GCSE Managing Resources.
After school this evening I ran a twilight session as part of my role as a Geography Champion.
Eight teachers from local primary schools looked at practical ways to use Google Earth in the classroom. A key point of the discussion was that Google Earth can be used to help use geography across the curricullum.
Below are the materials that I used during the session. Feel free to adapt them for your own uses.
Download the resources here: Using Google Earth in the Primary Classroom and Google Earth Navigation
For more free support for Primary Geography visit the Geography Champion’s NING
The session was appropriately timed as today is GIS Day!
I have just put together a quick lesson on Sustainable Development in Cities to kick off the build up to when all of Year 8 are off timetable working on designing ‘Sustainable Cities’.
Worksheet mentioned in the PowerPoint.
Please add a comment if you find any other useful resources.
I got this book about a month ago and have just got round to reading through it. It presents ideas that have made me think about how I give presentations.
After all that is what I spend a significant part of my life doing. As a teacher I am constantly giving presentations; they may be broken up with lots of other activities; however in nearly every lesson I will spend some time infront of the class presenting material.
A key point that is raised in the first text is that having the same information coming out of the mouth of the presenter as written on the PowerPoint is pointless. The author argues that it is difficult to read and listen at the same time; and if you remain silent and let the audience read the text, why are you there. He goes on to say that a good oral presentation is different than a well written document – and if you attempt to produce both you are going to produce poor results.
Within the book there are four tips to improve your PowerPoint slides immediately:
1. Make slides to reinforce your words not repeat them – no more than six words on a slide, ever.
2. Don’t use cheesy images, use professional quality clear and crisp images.
3. No disolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Create an accompanying written document to leave behind that can include more detail including footnotes and references.
The rest of the book goes into more detail with regards to diffferent techniques and ways to lay out presentations. For example there is a Japanese presentation technique called Pecha-kucha. A presentation of 20 slides each remaining on the screen for 20 seconds. This results in a tight presentation of 6 minutes 40 seconds. This would be useful as a task to set sixth form students when presenting material.
The rest of the book gives a variety of ideas for inproving presentations which I will try out at a later date.
It is a useful book that has made me reflect on the PowerPoints that I produce; though I use less than I did when I first started teaching – this is in part because I don’t have the time. I think that I am particularly guilty of giving ‘bad presentations’ when I am teaching my sixth form. This is due to the fact I usually have a large amount of content to get through in limited time so feel obliged to get lots of bullet points on the screen for them to copy down. I am going to try a different technique. Instead I will have some slides with images, which I will talk through; and we will then discuss as a class. I will then give them a printed set of notes that relate to the material that they can use for revision.
I will attempt it next week and blog with the results.
This year we are teaching the new CCEA GCSE Geography Syllabus and we have started with the unit on Weather and Climate.
We had lots of information in the textbook on impacts to MEDCs but not much on LEDCs.
Attached is a mystery type card sort activity with the key question:
In November 2008, President Mohamed Nasheed announced plans to look into purchasing new land in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia. Why?
Included within the cards are subheadings to be used to aid classification (Economic, Social, Environmental, and Response).
(I can’t take all the credit for this – it was a team effort with my colleague Michelle)
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